I visited the site, and watched the pretty Flash presentation. I wonder who came up with this idea.
Okay, just to look at some of the technical/historical aspects …
The claim is that the capacitor’s plates were an outer coating of gold and an inner coating of gold, with acacia wood as a dielectric. The two cherubim on the top could have been positive and negative terminals. Also, the poles used to carry it served as insulators from the “deadly” (see below) charge on the box.
The only record that I know of is the detailed account of the ark’s construction in Exodus 25. The description of the main box is correct (lined inside/outside with gold), but the cover (“mercy seat” in KJV) was to be of solid gold (Ex. 25:17).
There’s no mention of the cherubim being installed differently (to be of opposite polarity, one would need to be insulated from the outer plate and sunk into the inner plate somehow).
The carrying poles were to be overlaid with gold just as the ark was, which makes it unlikely that they were used to insulate anything.
So, even if the details were off, what would it be like if such a giant capacitor were to be made?
Ignoring the stuff at the corners, the sides are all approximately parallel plate capacitors. Let’s let the top be of the same construction (gold plating with acacia-wood dielectric).
Allowing a rather generous 50 cm for a cubit, the long sides were (2 1/2 cubits) 1.25 m and the width and height were (1 1/2 cubits) .75 m . This gives a total area of 4.1 m[sup]2[/sup]. We can’t be sure of the thickness of the wood, but for now, allow 2 cm of wood.
A parallel plate capacitor with a dielectric which has a relative dielectric constant of eps[sub]r[/sub] has capacitance :
C = eps[sub]r[/sub]*eps[sub]0[/sub] * (Area / separation distance)
It may be true that the mysterious acacia wood is of unknown dielectric constant, but almost all wood is around 2 at the most.
Plugging in these numbers (along with the permittivity of free space (eps[sub]0[/sub]) = 8.84x10[sup]-12[/sup] F/m),
we get a capacitor of about 3.5 nF (that’s nanoFarads, 10[sup]-9[/sup]). By comparison, the power supply capacitors in most electronics are in the 10-40,000 uF range (10 million times greater). That’s just to show the relative size and potential of modern capacitors. Because the deadliness of the shock depends on the charge stored, and charge stored is voltage * capacitance, the breakdown voltage of the dielectric is important.
Even if the wood were of an unusually high dielectric, or they used distilled water instead of wood (eps[sub]r[/sub] = 80 or so), that only gives an 40-fold increase, to about .1 uF . We won’t bother asking how they plated the gold onto the water.
Such a capacitor, needless to say, would hardly hold enough charge to kill a hedgehog before breaking down. (I think a lightning bolt discharges about 20 Coulombs. To put that on the arkapacitor, you’d need to apply about 6 billion volts. The acacia wood would not be able to withstand such a voltage before breaking down and conducting. Moreover, if the cherubim on top were terminals, it’d be tough to get lightning to jump off the box to anywhere, since they’re pretty close together.)
And that’s ignoring all the other things already mentioned that the ark accomplished as the symbol of the Lord’s presence.
Okay, that’s enough silly speculation. Like I said, I wonder who came up with the idea. I wonder if they got paid for it, too.
Ex. 29:46
And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them forth out of the land of Egypt that I might dwellamong them; I am the LORD their God
